Memory is the product - Industry conversations with Matthew Anderson, Food & Beverage Manager, The Macallan Estate
- 22 hours ago
- 7 min read
"Listening to your guests and developing a relationship during their experience always leads to a memory to think back on years down the line."
Matthew Anderson said that almost as a side note, tucked into a conversation about whether his time as a brand ambassador in Dubai had taught him more about guests than running F&B operations in Speyside. It wasn't an intentional line. Which is exactly why it's the most important thing he said.
Matthew is the Food and Beverage Manager at The Macallan Estate. He's also, if you trace the path back, one of a few experience team members who've been there since the new distillery opened in 2018, watching a visitor experience take shape from the inside with no blueprint to follow, and helping steer what began as a whisky bar and à la carte offering through a fine dining tasting menu concept and eventually into TimeSpirit, a restaurant that opened in October 2024 and quietly carries the ambition of a Michelin star on its shoulders.
The career path that got him there is worth paying attention to. Tour guide at the previous Visitor Centre. Bartender. F&B Supervisor. Brand Ambassador in Dubai. Back to Speyside as Head Bartender. Assistant Manager. Now F&B Manager. Each role a different angle on the same question: what does a guest actually need from this experience? Most people in hospitality move in one direction. Matthew moved in several, and came back with something each time.
The Dubai chapter is particularly interesting. Nearly a year working as a brand ambassador, immersed in the values and expectations of guests living at the luxury end of the world. He describes becoming more culturally aware, more attuned to what people in that space actually value. The fine details land differently when you've spent time in environments where nothing is overlooked. Then he came home to Speyside, to the operational detail of running F&B at one of the most visited distilleries in Scotland, and built on it.
What he actually says, about both roles, is that the central quality in each wasn't product knowledge or technical skill. It was connection. "Pulling out a chair, a selection of a whisky to mark an occasion, a handwritten recipe for a cocktail they enjoyed: it all matters." These details don't just appear on any menu. They happen because someone in the room is paying close attention to the specific person in front of them, not a generalised version of a guest.
This is worth sitting with. The hospitality industry has spent considerable energy treating personalisation as a systems problem, a CRM issue, a data issue. Pine and Gilmore argued as far back as 1998 that businesses competing in the experience space are in the memories business. Memory, they said, is the product. Not the dish. Not the dram. The thing a guest carries out with them. [1]
The research backs this up. Qualtrics XM Institute found that 77% of customers would recommend a brand following a single positive experience. [2] And Motista's research found that customers who feel genuinely emotionally connected to a brand carry a lifetime value 306% higher than those who are merely satisfied, staying with a brand for an average of 5.1 years. [3] Satisfied is not the same as connected. The industry sometimes forgets that.
Storytelling as the thread
What Matthew describes at The Macallan is not a personalisation strategy. It's a philosophy. "Storytelling is at the heart of what we do," he says. "With over 200 years of heritage, our dedication to craftsmanship, the natural beauty of our vast Estate, and of course our creative partnerships, there's no shortage of inspiration."
That inspiration takes a very specific form at TimeSpirit. The restaurant is built around a partnership with El Celler de Can Roca, the Roca Brothers' celebrated Girona restaurant. It's a collaboration that, in Matthew's words, has "helped inform our approach to menu curation and pairing, with a shared exchange of expertise that ensures both whisky and cuisine are enjoyed at their finest." The result is an experience where food and whisky don't just coexist on a table, they're in conversation with each other.
His approach to pairing reflects that. Sometimes a dish comes first, and the whisky is chosen to complement it. Sometimes it's the other way around. "Both need to sing rather than one shine more than the other." It's a simple line, but it carries a lot of weight. In any experience that's genuinely working, no single element dominates. The space, the pacing, the knowledge of the person guiding it, the quality of what's in the glass, they hold each other up.
What synaesthesia looks like in a professional kitchen
I experience synaesthesia when I nose whisky. I see full visual scenes, colours, textures. It's not a metaphor. It's how my brain processes flavour, involuntarily, every time. I mentioned this to Matthew when we spoke about how food influences the sensory experience of whisky beyond conventional pairing logic.
His response surprised me, in the best possible way.
"With the TimeSpirit tasting menu, we look beyond pairing in the traditional sense and instead seek to compose a cohesive narrative, one that unfolds through both the whiskies and the dishes," he said. "Each course is designed with intention, creating moments of crescendo that our whisky meets with equal depth of aroma, flavour, and story."
And then this: "We collaborate with a talented team, some of whom share your synaesthetic way of experiencing whisky. There is often a vivid exchange of imagery, colour and memory, anecdotes that enrich the moment and transform the tasting into something immersive."
I wasn't expecting that. The idea that there are people inside The Macallan's kitchen and F&B team who are working with flavour the same way I do, processing it visually, talking about colour and memory as working tools rather than poetic flourishes, says something important about where the best experience design is heading. It's not about delivering a script. It's about what happens when the people in the room are genuinely engaged with what they're doing and with each other.
That's the version of hospitality that creates the memory Matthew keeps coming back to.
What the experience economy actually means
Pine and Gilmore's framework is clear: experiences represent a higher level of customer value than services precisely because they're memorable and rich in sensation. The emotional connection made during an experience is where the value lives, not in the product itself, but in what a person carries away. [1]
This is what sits at the heart of everything Vantage Creative does. The spirits industry has a long-standing habit of treating the guest as someone to be educated rather than someone to be heard. Tasting notes delivered confidently. Vocabulary that signals in-group and out-group without ever saying so. The unspoken suggestion that if you can't find the right words for what you're tasting, you might not be quite the right person to be tasting it. I've watched that dynamic play out many times. It's not what experience design should be. It's what it defaults to when nobody asks the harder question: what does this person actually feel?
Matthew's answer to that question, built across every role he's held and every guest he's stood in front of, is the same one Vantage Creative starts from. People remember how you made them feel. The whisky is the mechanism. The memory is the outcome.
At Vantage Creative, that means designing experiences around what you actually perceive, not what a tasting note tells you to perceive. It means asking the question, not delivering the answer. It means nobody in the room is wrong, because perception is individual and that's precisely the point.
His father, Russell Anderson, former Distillery Manager at The Macallan with over thirty years in the industry, gets a mention when I ask what the most valuable thing he's learned is. The answer is resilience. Don't dwell on setbacks. Take the positives forward. It's the same instinct applied differently: keep your attention on what's actually in front of you. That quality shows in Matthew's work. Not every role was a straight step up. Some were sideways. Some took him to the other side of the world and back. All of them were useful.
Experience The Macallan Estate
If this conversation has you wanting to see what Matthew's team has built at first hand, the estate has three distinct ways in.
TimeSpirit is The Macallan's collaboration with El Celler de Can Roca. A six-course lunch tasting menu at £75 per person, or a nine-course dinner at £105 per person, available Thursday to Sunday. The restaurant seats just 24, with an open kitchen and floor-to-ceiling views across the Speyside countryside. Whisky or wine pairing is available alongside both menus.
The Macallan Bar holds the largest selection of Macallan single malts anywhere in the world, with handcrafted whisky cocktails and non-alcoholic options, open Thursday to Sunday.
Distillery experiences run Thursday to Sunday for public bookings, with private experiences available Monday to Wednesday. All must be booked in advance. Full details and reservations at themacallan.com.
At Vantage Creative, we work from the same starting point.
The guests who leave a tasting still talking about it aren't the ones who were told the most. They're the ones who were listened to. Who were given the space to discover what they actually think, rather than being guided towards the correct answer.
That's the experience Vantage Creative designs for private bookings, venue partnerships, and bespoke sensory events across Speyside and beyond. Seven spirit categories. One consistent question: what do you actually get from this?
Your senses. Your discovery.
References
[1] Pine, B.J. and Gilmore, J.H. (1998). 'Welcome to the Experience Economy.' Harvard Business Review, July–August 1998.
[2] Qualtrics XM Institute. 'ROI of Customer Experience.' Qualtrics.com.
[3] Magids, S., Zorfas, A. and Leemon, D. (2015). 'The New Science of Customer Emotions.' Harvard Business Review, November 2015.